jueves, 24 de febrero de 2011

Mepis 11 Says Yes to LibreOffice

Apparently, Mepis 11, that is, the new version of Mepis (currently on beta stage) has joined all the other Linux distributions that support LibreOffice.

LibreOffice has been included in the repositories for those who have installed the beta release and want to test it. For others, a third beta will be available in time.

I had manually installed LibreOffice on my Mepis 11 system before this suite made its way to Mepis. It ran well, but the original .debs I used lacked a gtk component that I needed for typing Asian languages.

Fortunately, a fellow Mepis user let me know that Debian had already made that package. I downloaded it and after installing it, my LibreOffice is able to type Japanese, Korean and Thai!

For some, the move from one office suite to another may not mean much, but for me it is something necessary: it means supporting open source. I don't know how Oracle is handling OpenOffice currently, but it seems open source developers feel the company's policies are not supportive enough. In my opinion, if companies do not do it, all individuals, regardless of their OS preference, should try to support open source because it benefits them all.